FW: [legalxml-courtfiling] Preliminary List of "Roles"

We use "qualified" as a way to identify a quality that a thing has, so yes it is 'limiting' in the sense that by having such quality, then it is a member of a (sub-)group whose members have such quality. No I wouldnt say that a "DistrictCourtJudge" is a 'quality' that is applicable to any judge ... a "PresidingJudge" could be though -- and that term would be a subclass of "QualifiedJudge", a subclass of Judge and QualifiedActor. [I'm calling these out because the subclasses of Judge in our dictionary are currently un-organized in this fashion.]

A Role is not defined in the dictionary (how strange!) but we're happy to use any of the Webster definitions for this.

A Class is explained by the W3C's RDF as:

   "[Class] corresponds to the generic concept of aType orCategory, similar

    to the notion of a Class in object-oriented programming languages such

    as Java.

    [and]

    The RDF Schema type system is similar to the type systems of object-

    oriented programming languages such as Java. However, RDF differs

    from many such systems in that instead of defining a class in terms of

    the properties its instances may have, an RDF schema will define

    properties in terms of the classes of resource to which they apply. "

In other words, think of a definition of a "class" as the definition of a certain re-occurring "mathematical set" of its members. The definition identifies the characteristics that each member of the set must have. At least, this is the way that DARPA/OIL look at it, and it seems pretty sound to me.

-----Original Message-----
From: Winters, Roger [mailto:Roger.Winters@METROKC.GOV]
Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 2:57 PM
To: 'John McClure'
Subject: RE: [legalxml-courtfiling] Preliminary List of "Roles"

I like what I see here. I hope they pass it along to the Justice Data Dictionary group. Seems to me all of this thinking needs to come together for the benefit of all, to come to a way of naming and classifying that can serve to underpin our respective efforts to build specifications.

I wonder, though, what the meaning of "Qualified" is in the classification you were describing? Does it mean "Qualified" as in "limited?" For example, a Judge could be Qualified by being seen as a "DistrictCourtJudge" as opposed to a "SupremeCourtJustice," or maybe that's a qualifier, too. I didn't think you meant "Qualified" in the sense of "found fit for" or "having the right credentials" or "passing a test." I'd appreciate your helping me understand what "Qualified" means in this context.

It would be helpful to me to see individual definitions, as concise, yet complete and exact as possible, for terms like these:

They are, of course, words used in many ways in English, depending on context. In the context of your work, they probably have come to have meanings that are very clear to you, but those of us outside may not grasp them and will interpret meaning based on our own usage of the terms. Getting such basic "here's what we mean by these terms in this context" information out front would, I think, really help bridge some communication gaps that are still troubling to me.

Roger Winters
Electronic Court Records Manager
King County
Department of Judicial Administration
516 Third Avenue, E-609 MS: KCC-JA-0609
Seattle, Washington 98104
V: (206) 296-7838 F: (206) 296-0906
roger.winters@metrokc.gov

-----Original Message-----
From: John McClure [mailto:jmcclure@hypergrove.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 2:31 PM
To: legalxml-courtfiling@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [legalxml-courtfiling] Preliminary List of "Roles"

Hello,
The attached XML file is a view on the "Actor" hierarchy as defined within the
Data Consortium Dictionary, an RDF dictionary that you can access at
http://search.dataconsortium.org or download from http://www.dataconsortium.org.
The attached file is meant to be viewed using Internet Explorer, not Mozilla. I
am making no claim that the attached is complete or correct -- it is the result
of our work to-date to organize those terms of interest to us -- but it is
offered here in the spirit of contributing to this discussion. After I finish my
current project, I'll be redirecting my attention back to refining its
hierarchies of terms and adding associations between the terms, that is,
identifying the properties/attributes in our view relevant to each of the terms.

In our dictionary, each term is defined as a "class" -- any name for a class may
also be used as an XML element name, and thus we can generate XML Schema from
this dictionary -- and for each class we identify what it is a subClassOf (that
is, its 'parent' classes). This information can be easily used by applications
that want to know for instance that a 'CircuitCourt' is a type of 'Tribunal'.

In our Actor hierarchy, we carefully distinguish between qualified-terms and
terms that represent 'concrete actors'. Our 5 types of concrete actors are the
same as defined by the Dublin Core -- Person, Institution, Company, Group, and
Organization. These 5 are all 'subclasses' of the Actor class. We add one
additional subclass: QualifiedActor. QualifiedActor is broken down into
QualifiedPerson, ..., QualifiedOrganization. To this we have added one
additional subclass: Role. A Role is broken down into RoleQualifiedPerson, ....,
RoleQualifiedOrganization. At this level, we found it necessary to add
GenericRole and QualifiedRole.

We explicitly created our qualified actor hierarchies in a manner that aligns
with the North American Standard Industrial Classification (NAICS) -- we expect
certain important benefits from doing so. Thus, a Judge is a
PublicAdministrationOccupation, which is an Occupation, which is a
QualifiedPerson, which is both a Person and a QualifiedActor, both of which are
Actors. If you're still reading this, you might want to know that a Court (a
Tribunal) is a PublicInstitution, which is an Institution, which is an Actor. If
desired, one could create a subclass of Tribunal called QualifiedTribunal, where
additional terms may be placed.

Another hierarchy exists for types of Events, such as a CourtProceeding (which
could have CriminalTrial as a subclass) and so on. Eventually we'll relate the
Roles that are involved with each of those event types. I mention this so as to
note that a hierarchy of actors should be independent of their relationships.
There are exceptions to every rule of course -- in our dictionary, a FirstParty
term is supposed to have a match to a SecondParty term.

Now, John Messing mentions 'Party' as a candidate "role" -- prompting this
note -- which in our dictionary is defined as a "LegalParty" having FirstParty,
SecondParty, and ThirdParty as subclasses. Examing the terms under these 3
subclasses, it's pretty clear that this part of the dictionary should be
re-structured to distinguish between parties to a (legal) proceeding and parties
to a commercial transaction. But then again, I've been waiting somewhat for
ebXML to sort out what "class" metadata is going to look like for the roles they
have identified for commercial transactions -- first though they have (had?) to
come to grips with what they mean by a "class" in the first place. I don't know,
maybe the concept of "class" has been deleted altogether from their spec.

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